


the dead parts of me come alive for you

by bluestxrsbats



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Best Friends to Lovers, Best friend!Jason Todd, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Jason Todd Feels, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is blissfully oblivious, OR IS HE, Soft Jason Todd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-07-10 07:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19902103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestxrsbats/pseuds/bluestxrsbats
Summary: Being in love with your best friend Jason Todd isn’t easy. There is so much you want to say and yet you don’t want to ruin it, ruin the one thing that keeps you alive.The truth is so bittersweet. Your best friend, Jason Peter Todd, is oblivious to the fact he owns your heart.





	1. deep in thought

**Author's Note:**

> please leave kudos and comments if you enjoy! Thank you :)

Jason Peter Todd. Red Hood at night, running beneath the stars in a flurry of bullets and hard fists. A broken boy by day, with fingers that sometimes trembled and a fear of the unknown that controlled him unlike anyone you knew. He was your best friend, the person that kept you sane when your world crushed you and swallowed you whole. He kept you just above the surface, and sometimes you drowned together.

You were both yin and yang. Opposites in all the senses of the word, and yet you fit together like the missing puzzle piece that you had spent all your life looking for. There was no denying the fact that together you completed each other and fixed the broken parts that not even the best could put back together. Jason was broken beyond compare, and you had too many fragments that made up your soul. But he could sew you to become a semblance of a normal being by just the sound of your name on his lips.

You couldn’t avoid the way his every word fuelled endless daydreams, his voice unearthed visions of dalliances that were written behind your eyelids every time your eyes fluttered shut. Jason Todd robbed you of precious time that could have been spent where your affection could have been tentatively returned, and yet he was none the wiser. Every run of his scarred fingers through dark curls that you itched to do the same to made your chest implode, your blood sing in a way that was purely to do with him. Everything about Jason, your best friend Jason, made your entire being beat to his name that was inscribed into your very bones.

The night at the Gotham funfare had confirmed your fears. Together you had laughed under the smattering of stars and bathed in the multicolour lights that practically represented all that teenagers stood for, it had seized you and never let you go. Jason had turned to you, white streak glowing like a beacon - a halo - and blue eyes so bright and light that you had almost gasped at the true, unadulterated beauty that was your best friend.

And your heart had decided traitorously that it no longer wanted Jason as a friend. You wanted him as a lover, to be tangled together in sheets sleeping softy in the early hours of the morning. You wanted to kiss him on his nose, laugh and cry together in a way that only people who knew all of each other could. In that moment, grin pulling at his lips which made him truly look his nineteen years, your heart had become his prisoner. But Jason was oblivious to that fact that it belonged to him.

Surely he must have realised that friends didn’t hold eye contact so intense and soul shattering as if it were too magnetic to pull away, as if you were both in your own orbit. Every time you fell deeper into him, drowning. Friends called each other to talk through problems and nightmares, but surely he realised by that his voice was balm to all of your wounds, so gravelly and yet soothing; he kept you alive. Jason would take your hand for no reason - so large and calloused compared to yours, yet he would hold it as if you were fragile and he could break you at any moment by accident - and the curling tension knotted inside would drain away like water from a bathtub. Surely he didn’t miss the way you subconsciously leaned into him because his warmth was incomparable to anything else.

It had all started when you first met him, cigarette perched between his lips and face hazy from that cloud of noxious smoke that on anyone else would’ve have had your nose wrinkled in distaste but on him was purely magical. Jason’s eyes had snapped to yours, flickering with uncertainty and smothering anger that had you almost recoiling. He had been angles and hard lines, softened by the curl of his dark hair, and you had clicked into him unknowingly, for you had seen a shadow of yourself in him.

That had been the seed of the sapling rooted deep within you. By the time you had realised that you were hooked on Jason Todd, a forest stood in its place, thick and lush and wildly established. There was no way that your soul would ever allow you to love someone else, for there was no longer any room for them. The trees were weathered and would not fall, and therefore your fate was indefinitely sealed. You were bound in love to your best friend.

The gritty movie finished - Jason always made you two watch these things - the warm breeze of the summer evening caressing your face gently as you wished his hands to. Your head was burrowed into Jason’s chest, his arm bracketed around you as if protecting you from everything the world hurled at you. His laugh, low and gravelly yet equally breathy, had your heart burning for him and him alone. The fire grew at his very glance, the way sometimes you would see him with a fond expression on his face that you weren’t sure wasn’t just your eyes playing tricks and fooling your heart. Did Jason feel the same way about you? Did his soul ache every time he glimpses your face, or watched you smile? Did he fall more in love with you every second of every hour of every day like you did with him?

When you fell into slumber - for it was inevitable in his embrace - your mind screamed at you to tell him how you felt. How, without him, there would not be a part of you alive, that without him you would be a hollow shell. It was stupid of you to get so close to him, to let Jason put you back together and ingrain himself within your body. But you had. You hoped, in the lucid dreams you kept close to your heart, that one day Jason Todd would come to love you as you loved him.

For you would never love anyone else the way you loved him.


	2. save me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night that you found out that your best friend was the gun toting, gruff vigilante Red Hood was an awful night, twisted with memories that you wished never to remember but knew that would be branded into your consciousness until your last breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Sexual assault implied, not explicitly mentioned, nor anything graphic.
> 
> Thanks for reading, enjoy, and don’t forget to leave kudos/comments! :)

The night that you found out that your best friend was the gun toting, gruff vigilante Red Hood was an awful night, twisted with memories that you wished never to remember but knew that would be branded into your consciousness until your last breath.

You had been walking home from a study session at the library that night. Your flat wasn’t far, tucked away in a nook of a too old tenement block, and you had never been intending to be out so long. Surrounded by the smell of bound books and the light scratching on pen on paper, time had lulled you into a false sense of security, passing quicker than water over smooth stone. When the doors had swung open, bag on your back filled with heavy, heavy books, the sky was clouded dark and stars had come out.

Knuckleduster clasped tight in your clammy hand - too sweaty, far too sweaty - your every step had been riddled with tension that you knew would not disappear until you were home and doing up the myriad of bolts and locks at your door. 

Oh, how you wished for Jason to be here with you. You had only known him for a few months, fleeting really, but it felt like a lifetime. He was already branded deep within you, and you knew that his silent ease and silly bravado would have quietened your drumming pulse.

But, beside you the air was cold, and there was no Jason there to protect you. Your best friend could ease even the worst fears that clutched at your heart and squeezed, even after the plagued feeling of whether either of you were stepping over a fine line of friendship. It was as if you danced across it, back and forth every day.

You knew you had fallen over the side that was something stronger than friendship.

Gotham was a broken excuse of a city, which is why you didn’t trust it as far as you could throw it. A hundred million people - it felt like - just about survived here, all buried under the rolling and churning smog that blanketed everything that stayed still for too long. Gotham City oozed crime like pus from weeping sores, infecting and warping every unfortunate life that was present in its embrace. 

The light at the end of the road flickered ominously, the hairs on your arms standing to attention. You could feel eyes on you, the whisper of breath at the nape of your neck. Walking faster, you prayed to not get caught in something that you couldn’t fight your way out of. You could throw a mean punch, but that was it, and would hardly hold off anyone, not here.

Then, your worst fears had come alive. Materialising from the shadows were silhouettes of people that were undoubtably bigger than you. And there was more of them, circling in, towering tall. Frozen, you were rooted to the spot for every space that you could have escaped from had been filled. Alone, surrounded, you tried not to sob, though you knew what was inevitably going to happen.

It was like a tunnel, for you were almost sure of the end outcome.

The tallest leant towards you, leering, ugly. You spat at them - anything - for you had read somewhere that they don’t pick on people who fight. But it was wrong, for their fingers got more frantic at your struggle, and your shouts turned to whimpers. Their bodies were stronger than yours, blocking out the world as they tried to take everything. Your clothes were shredded, and yet you didn’t give up, sinking your teeth into one in a bid to make them stop.

You were kicked in the stomach, and it hurt so badly. Spitting out red into a puddle, you knew that there was no saviour here. This area was silent, cold, apart from the men and two women that surrounded you, shrouded under their hoods and clutching knives to their chests. 

This was it.

And then, he dropped. All eyes flickered to the unmistakable thud of a person landing on gravel, and you saw it in their faces, fear mapped across them. Smiling, though it were more like a grimace, you tried to crawl away. But the ring leader grabbed you before you escaped their little circle. You started to sob as the tip of his knife dug into your throat, breaths coming out like you were choking on glass shards.

You closed your eyes, but it was over. The people who terrorised you were lying on the floor, bloodied, and a man was holding you gently as if you were a rare flower that was the last of its kind, fragile as strands of candy floss.

It was familiar, so familiar that it tugged at your memories, and yet you knew not where from. 

He insisted on following you back to your apartment, hands lingering on your arms like sweet, sweet kisses with how light he was. 

But soon, it became apparent. This was no man, for the person walked a bit like a teenager with swagger and long strides. His shoulders were broad, yes, but not quite that of a man’s. You knew instantly, however, when he fumbled with the key at your door. It was almost subconscious, the way his fingers twitched. Your hand came up to contain a sob as it hit you like the full force of a flooding dam. 

This could only be your best friend.

“T-Thank you.” Your voice wobbled, all of the night’s activities catching up to you faster than a spinning fairground ride. The man in front of you perched awkwardly, as if he were unsure what to do, confirming your suspicions. He pulled away from you gently, with a hint of reluctance - as if he had to go but wanted to truly stay - and you threw caution to the wind.

“I know it’s you, Jason Peter Todd.

He turned to face you, features not covered laced with curiosity and a little bit of fear. The tension rippled through his broad shoulders - oh, you would know those shoulders anywhere, for they had been traced by your eyes too many times - as he stood stock still as you rubbed his palm. “You saved me Jason. How...How I didn’t notice it before, I don’t know.”

For a split second, you thought it was terribly, terribly wrong; anxiety rushing through every part of you when he tugged his hand from yours. Instead, he sunk down onto your ratty sofa, pulling his hood back and revealing the rest of his face. Jason’s hair, damp from the fog that hung perpetually over Gotham was half dried, curling wildly and licking up in all directions. You knew then that your heart had become more incapacitated by him, his sharp cheekbones and pale skin that almost glowed in the silver of the moonlight. The white streak brought out the gold in his ornery stare.

He was like an angel, and the forest inside you bloomed more.

”I...Stay, please.”

His eyes widened fractionally at your broken words, betraying his surprise. You held your breath, waiting for the inevitable of him leaving you here alone. After all, you had not known each other long, even if you spent much time together. The cacophony of sirens and sounds that Gotham was alive reverberated through your thin walls. Conflict played across his face at this, and you turned away, waiting for rejection.

He spoke then, low and gentle. “Of course I’ll stay with you.”

Your fate had been sealed, then, as he played with your hair absentmindedly. “Don’t you want me to explain?” Jason has asked tentatively.

”Not unless you want to.” You knew how hard it was to tell secrets so close to your heart that they tangled with every word you spoke. You knew that when they had taken up space it was very hard to find a way to express them. Hopefully, Jason would tell them to you in time. Time healed all wounds, covered them in gossamer so that they were not as raw.

You knew this first hand.

Lying in his arms on the sofa, the nature of your friendship changed. It was probably that moment that you fell in love with him, though you’ll never know. Jason never kept secrets from you, after that, and insisted that you called him if you were ever out alone at night. He joked about it, the morbid way he would with everything, but there was an undertone of fear that decorated his words.

And you fell deeper.


	3. stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason says thank you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave kudos/comments if you enjoy! Thank you :)

After that evening, you and Jason fell into a routine tangled with familiarity. Slowly, phone calls of stuttered words eased into conversations about each other’s day, moving into hours of listening to each other’s voices without any sign of an end.

Two in the morning and you were leaning against the window sill still wide awake, fingers picking at the crumbling curls of paint as you listened to Jason talk. It was sweltering hot, the low hum of the fan doing nothing to quell the sticky irritant of a warm night in a city. The world felt utterly muggy, clinging to every heaving surface as if you were swimming through thick mud. As always, your best friends voice made it bearable again; Jason’s voice soothing and calming in a way that was distinctly him.

You should be asleep, however fitful, and so should he; yet most nights you could be found talking about everything with Jason, stories melting into quotations of books and film references that flowed off your tongue as easy as they did for him. It tugged at your heart, the way that you were both vulnerably connected despite being in two different places by the confiding nature in which you both whispered secrets that were never spoken in the light of day to each other.

There was something about the night, when the sky hung deep midnight blue - almost black but not quite dark enough, smudged by lights from houses and tenement blocks and offices - that you loved so much. The day could never compare with how wholesome and encompassing the night was. There was only one niggling thing that ate away at your love of the dark: in Gotham, you could never see the stars. Stars instead were the glinting of skyscrapers windows, the blue and red flashes of sirens instead of shooting stars.

You missed them so much.

As a child, you had grown up in the heart of the country. Surrounded by wheat fields as far as the eye could see and trees, green upon green upon green, you had been used to hard work and the hazy heat of summer. The nights were your favourite though, when pinks and purples hung blending into the bottom of the sky, shrouding the gold stalks swaying in the light breeze with colours so bright that you always had to blink to check that you weren’t dreaming. Not a sound or street lamp in sight, all you could see for miles were stars.

Millions upon millions of specks would glitter in the sky, and you traced each invisible constellation line eagerly with your tiny fingers, mouth forming silent names that you would know without having to see them. You would sneak out of the cool house in the summer, wrapped only in a light crocheted blanket over your pyjamas and sit in the middle of what felt like nowhere and yet was everywhere, and watch.

You missed them with a desperate yearning. But long ago, your life had been decided and you could never, ever go back home to flat fields and dirt tracks. Gotham’s starless skies were your home now, and that was that. And then one day, you learnt that you were wrong.

”Let’s go out.” Jason with his sleep softened voice blurted, piercing the tentative quiet punctuated only by breaths across the line, teenage spontaneity and impulsiveness bleeding through the older exterior he usually fronted.

”W-What?” You couldn’t help the way that laughter bubbled up from inside, for it was eleven at night in Gotham, a city in which you battened down the hatches and locked doors and windows alike when an inkling of dusk began to fall.

”You heard me. Let’s go out. I know a spot you’d like and plus, I’ll pick up some Thai.”

A part of you fluttered at the way that he remembered your love affair with takeaway Thai - one that rivalled your one with him, in fact - your heart evidently reading too far into the lines that he spoke, like an English teacher trying to find poetic techniques in a passage with only a few words worth mentioning. It was friend helping friend fight their demons, and that was all, no matter how much you longed for it.

Jason took your silence as an answer, and you could almost hear the smile on his voice. “I’ll be there in fifteen, alright? Don’t forget a coat, doll.”

You had met his older brother once, fleetingly. He had been built fairly similar to Jason, but with a charming, boyish way about him that had been both attractive and maddening. You hadn’t seen, but instead felt the way his eyes traced his brother’s interactions with you with barely hidden curiosity. Jason had snapped at him with hardened eyes and clipped words most of the time, yet the older man had never lost the sparkle in his eye nor the easy gait and easier grin.

He would have been your sister’s sort of boy, you concluded with a haunted thought.

The man - Dick, you remembered with startling clarity, for he had smirked at your raised eyebrow and said straight faced an innuendo that had you choking for air and Jason rolling his eyes - had been shocked with the way his brother acted, if his face was anything to go by. Then again, Jason had clutched your hand like he did so often and let his fingers linger slightly at your waist, so it was understandable if that had caused the reaction.

But as far as Jason was concerned, you believed, no you knew, he only thought of you as a good friend.

So caught up in your musings, you failed to hear the first knock, but by the third you were opening the door and grabbing the nearest coat. Jason was leaning against the wall outside, seemingly at home resting between the cracking plaster and gaping holes. Every time you saw your best friend, you became more enamoured with him. Every soft touch, every smirk and laugh entwined you tighter to him. 

Tonight was no different. Jason was silent, his hair springing free and curling even more in the humidity, and his cheeks were slightly flushed. “C’mon Y/N, any longer and the food’ll be cold and you’ll have a riot.”

You both slid into his car - he had accepted it begrudgingly from his father, who was obviously minted considering how nice it was, yet Jason always looked at it as if it were the source of every problem in the world - and headed off to God knows where, but you didn’t care. You would go anywhere and everywhere if it meant being by Jason’s side, and you would do it in a heartbeat.

When the car finally stopped, you were across the river from the finance district in a small clearing with a patch of trees. The water swirled, an inky black that reminded you how polluted Gotham was and how easy it was to drown in its lies, shining with a glassy quality not unlike crude oil. You turned to Jason, confusion etched across your face prompting him to gesture up and away from the glass buildings. 

Stars.

They couldn’t have been brighter than when you were younger, but somehow, they were. Mouth open in silent wonder, you could feel your vision blurring, the sky becoming glossy as tears welled up. You had missed them so much, and now here they were. Despite being in the presence of your favourite thing, your eyes drifted towards the boy who brought you here almost subconsciously. 

“It’s so...so beautiful. Thank you, Jason.”

”Yeah, it is.” The boy in question was leaning against the hood of the smart car, cigarette in his fingers and smoke curling towards the heavens: a relaxedness to him that was usually absent. Yet, he was glancing at you, eyes fastened to your face unabashedly. There was something so piercing about him that made you unable to pull your eyes from his dimly lit face.

He was so beautiful, and he didn’t even know it. 

You sat together, under the smattering of stars eating noodles and seeking warmth from each other. If this was what lovers, boyfriends and girlfriends and everyone did, then you never wanted to move. Just for a little while, you could pretend that maybe Jason loved you like that, and the moment was utterly right. A few seconds, and you wanted him to kiss you and feel the way you did more than anything. Alas, what you want is always what you do not get. You had learnt that at an early age.

“I knew you missed them,” he said, breathing out a tendril of sour smoke away form your face, “so...think of it as my thank you to you. Thanks for putting up with...everything. Me. This shitty life of mine. I-God I’m awful at this crap. I just... I don’t know what I’d do with you.”

You nodded, heart beating too fast to say anything else. And as your best friend looked down at you, eyes dark yet softer than you had possibly ever seen, all you wanted to say was the words that plagued your waking thoughts, your careful dreams and every word that entered your head.

 _I love you, all of you and I always will_ , you wanted to say. _You make my day, my evening, keep me alive. Without you I would be nothing, and I cannot be bear to think of a time where you are not beside me._ It was all you wanted to spill reverently from your lips so that you didn’t have to lie to your best friends face anymore. This was killing you, breaking you apart and yet you loved it.

You loved _him_.

Instead, tears pricking the edge of your eyes, stabbing your heart like little needles, you said a poor replacement. A safe replacement. A lie.

”You’re the best friend ever, Jay.”


	4. scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding out your best friends’ secret is souls shattering for both of you. But it’s enough that something good comes out of it, and you’re ever thankful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this is better than the last chapter, which I felt was a little dull, but anyway. Enjoy! Please leave kudos and comments, it’s amazing to hear what people think of this as I have enjoyed writing it so much! :)

It had always made you wonder why, even in the sweltering sun, your best friend Jason always worse long sleeves. Even sitting in the direct sunlight - grey gold beating down on both your shoulders - he would be in some thick sleeved top. You never brought it up, for everyone had secrets that they kept close to their hearts, and you felt that his choice in clothing was entwined tightly with his. Jason always reminded you of a domesticated wild animal; there was something in the way he moved, every tic or twitch measured, somehow.

It would be visible in his eyes sometimes, an unfocused gloss that brimmed with the look of an outsider - the sort of dulness that spoke silent words of a life of never feeling part of anything, destined to eternally scavenge on the fleeting ghosts of acceptance that occasionally would flit his way - and it would make you hold his hand tighter, smile at him wider despite feeling as broken as he did. The shadow that would cross his features was as if he thought that he didn’t belong here, walking the world amongst men, women and children, passing them whilst watching the sun set or the fireworks burst in a cloud of grins and smiles.

You never understood it because he, more than anyone, belonged here just for thinking that he wasn’t good enough to. 

Then one night, you turned up at his place. It wasn’t uncommon nor unusual for you to climb the stairs to his apartment in a daze that consisted of fitful nightmares, unable to call ahead but needing to feel him near to you. This time, he answered the door shirtless, hair mussed from the ramblings of sleep. Nothing could prepare you for what you were met with, and you suddenly realised why Jason hid behind layer upon layer. Out of sight, out of mind. 

His body was littered with the white of scar tissue, bunched over firm muscle like flurries of snowflakes. Thick white across his throat, wrapped around his torso and forearms, a matted scrawl that inched below his low sweatpants, holes that looked suspiciously bullet shaped everywhere, little scratches like that of shrapnel. But it was the Y incision across from each shoulder joint to mid chest, then down the centre of his torso that set your blood cold. It was then that you realised why he felt that he had no right to be here. There was only thing that could make it, and you didn’t want to believe it. You couldn’t. 

An autopsy scar.

When he realised what you were fixed on, tension shot through him as if he became a steel rod. In any other situation, you would have admired the way his muscles looked in the glow of the dim hallway light, warm on the slight tan of his skin. Instead, eyes transfixed on his chest, flicking to his face and then back again, you both stood as if time had ceased to carry on, suspended in the dust particles in the air.

It could have been hours you stood there, or a few seconds, just staring and wondering and utterly terrified to what this meant. When you stepped over the threshold into Jason’s tiny but practical flat - riddled with bookshelves on every possible surface, smelling of cigarette smoke and something decidedly Jason - you turned to face him. 

He was still near the door, eyes fluttering close as a single tear tracked down his cheek, fists clenched white with tension. You’d never seen Jason cry, and watching him slowly break into pieces was not something you were going to do. Of their own accord your feet travelled to him, stopping just a few feet away. The white scars glowed eerily in the faint light from the lightning outside.

“It’s...it’s alright, Jason.” God, you didn’t know what to say. How do you comfort someone who wears the scar of a person that should be buried six feet under?

You stepped closer to him, tentatively, reaching for his hand. The signs were bright, glaringly so as you saw Jason retreat into his head, the one place that he without fail felt safe. He had confided in you once, voice thick with the delirium of sleep, that his head stopped him from destroying everything. It was a place that he went to avoid things that he didn’t want to do, a place where he wouldn’t never feel betrayal again or the pain of loving someone too much and losing them.

“No, it’s _not_ okay.” He snapped then, all anger and pain and terror muddled into one large pulse, “It’s not fucking okay! You’re always there, telling me that it’s alright, but it’s not. God, it never is. I’ve... _died_. Do you understand? I shouldn’t be here, and you know it.”

It was something that you had learnt in your time with Jason. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, he lashed out in barbed anger for he knew nothing else to do. Jason liked the upper hand, needed to know every possible outcome. Now, now it all fell into place like the puzzle that couldn’t be completed, for the final piece wasn’t hidden underneath the sofa to never be found anymore. No one could see the full picture until the piece was in it’s rightfully place, because everyone’s eyes are always drawn to the space, the gap. Now that it was there, you understood your best friend who had perpetually built a wall between you, more than you had before.

And in probably the most spectacularly worst thing you could have done - or best, it depends on the viewpoint - you bared your teeth right back at him. 

“I don’t care! How long is it going to take to get into your head? I’m not here temporarily, I’m not going to disappear at the slightest thing. Nothing can make me think any less of you. Nothing...Don’t _you_ understand? You deserve to be here, Jason Todd, no matter what has happened to you in the past.”

He stalked towards you, pointing at his chest and the riddles scars that reminded you of barbed wire. “I murder people, I hurt people and I enjoy it. Do you still like me now? I was killed by a madman, and now I’m no better than...than him. I am part of the scum of the earth.”

You almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation, how volatile you both ran together. “Those people you killed deserved it, they had killed and raped and harmed innocent people-“

”You think I’m any different?” He laughed, rimmed with spikiness, “Just like my brothers, you want to see the good in me. There isn’t any. I can’t be redeemed. What I’ve done, it’ll be there forever, and I will do it forever. Will you still be there, then?”

You could feel the tears slipping down your face. “Of course I will, because I _fucking love you_ , Jason. Nothing changes that, nothing can.”

Silence filled the room, Jason rooted to the spot opposite you, chest heaving and features forming an emotion that you had never seen on him before. You carried on, the words flowing from your mouth like a torrent. “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. Those scars, they mean nothing to me except that you have gone through so much that you didn’t deserve. Everything you do, everything you say makes me fall in love with you more. If...if you don’t feel the same way about me then I don’t care. We can go back to being friends. You mean to much to me to lose a friendship just because of what I feel. You keep me alive, Jason. I’ll always stand by you because you stood by me.”

You’d ruined it, destroyed the friendship that kept you alive, the person that kept our heart beating. But you believed your words; however hard it would be if he wanted you to stay friends then that would be what it would be. You loved him too much to let your rampant hormones destroy the best thing that had ever happened to you. A flash of lightning illuminated the two of you, stood in the same flat mere feet away, yet miles from each other in your minds. Different orbits began to merge, you could feel it as he moved towards you; your dreams and fears coming true.

In a moment that was spurned by anger, and something else that had much more emotion than you had ever seen from him, Jason stepped forward, sealing his lips to yours in something that was gentler than the tickle of a feather yet held the passion of the reunion of separated lovers. In the crashing of thunder and battering of rain against the window, you kissed your best friend as if the world was going to end in any second. And he kissed you back, with exactly the same in mind.

Cheeks bathed in the warmth of both of your tears, you realised that nothing had ever felt more right than being in Jason’s arms.

He was the missing puzzle piece. Your gap was filled and you hoped that his was too.


	5. death in the family

It changed between you after that night; the forest tangled inside you spreading and expanding towards something much more tentative which could only be Jason, surrounding you both in a halo of warmth. Every laugh, every touch, every smile was weighted with something much more heady than friendship, something that brought about an addictive warmth that you both relished in. Long nights turned into long mornings, into days upon days together. As always, arguments and tempers would flare, but it brought about periods of deeper understanding that benefited you both.

Together, you were home.

When calm had seeped into the air like cooling flannels on hot foreheads you would sit together, eating takeaway or home cooked meals depending on the time, talking about books that you’d both read with passion that always lead to more, or simply sitting in silence caught in your own thoughts but drawing strength from each other.

The night was when complications would arise, when Jason would pace across the floor and try even harder to hide the scars that you would assure him with your actions made him even more beautiful.

He had told you once, sinking in the rickety bones of his couch, that the night was his friend but also his foe. Jason could be himself in the dark, no one to judge the scars that he tried to hide from prying eyes in the light of the day. It was his protective cloak where he could be anyone for just a night and no one would be the wiser. Power, he said, it gave him so much power; the chance to reclaim a lifetime of being the underdog. 

Summer nights were his favourite, the air thick with heat and laughter, the breeze a welcome embrace that enabled him to hear the joy of the city that held such a special place in his battered heart, a city that he knew inside out because he had grown up in its very slums.

For all that he loved the night, Jason would close off, retreating into his imagination when you asked him about why he also hated it. It hurt, the way he would look off into the distance with glazed eyes as if reliving a time that had broken him beyond belief, but you didn’t push. You would never push because Jason, despite seeming all clenched jaw and eager fists was utterly fragile. 

The news flashed across the television then, all gloomy music and gloomy reporters. But something piqued your interest - fleeting, really - but your eyes stuck on a picture so familiar that your blood ran cold.

It was the anniversary of the death of Jason Todd: Bruce Wayne’s ward who had died tragically four years ago whilst on a Wayne Enterprise trip to Asia. 

You remembered watching the news report on your tiny family television that sat on the tiny little table in the lounge. Everyone in your family had watched transfixed and with bated breath, to hear the fate of a boy the same age as you; but there was no body recovered, no closure. It had been to stifling in the silent lounge, so you and escaped to sit on the porch. From that moment life has become much clearer for you - the true world exposed outside of your little, childish bubble - and settled on your shoulders.

Jason Todd had been your age, his face handsome and cocky, a smile that was crooked and made your heart flutter. But he was dead. That had been when you realised the world wasn’t fair.

The photo was pulled from the archives once more this year like some twisted ritual, but this time it was as if you had traced his features with your very fingers. When you realised, it had you scrambling out of the chair with a hand across your mouth. The smile that reached the eyes was unmistakable, the messy curly hair without a white streak was still his.

It was Jason,  _your_ Jason.

His words echoed around your mind, gaining speed until that was all you could hear, tumbling into every thought. “ _I died_.” Of course he was Jason Todd, because his brother hadn’t given a surname and there was only one man called Dick that looked familiar. He had died. The expensive car. The fact that he would brush over a surname, which you hadn’t given much thought to.

It seemed so utterly stupid that you had missed the connection, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Not now, not seeing his face on the screen in front of you, so young and carefree. Today was the anniversary of his death, but he was firmly in the world of the living.

That was how you stayed, staring at the youthful face of your best friend and lover, rocking yourself back and forth. It was as if you were rooted to the sofa, you didn’t move not even when night descended, How Jason found you when he kicked the door open with two bags of groceries.

The thud was audible as he dropped them on the scuffed wood floor; he knew you knew.

Jason’s footsteps faltered when he stopped just behind you. Your eyes fluttered shut for a fleeting moment when you felt his warm breath on your neck; he was here. As a child, you had lived in close to silence; it had created a vivid imagination that you cherished. But now, you craved more than anything to hear the gravelly timbre of Jason’s voice say something - _anything_ \- so that you knew that he was still behind you, still breathing.

Still alive.

“...How?”

It was barely a whisper to the wind, but you knew that Jason had heard it. But there was nothing to comprehend it, because it was a shell of a person behind you as if everything piece of light that was inherently your Jason had been snuffed out. The silence was deafening, ringing about a flat that was now too cold, too distant. He was drowning, drowning in memories too viscous to escape from you.

Both of you remained like that, transfixed on the grainy yet unmistakable photo on the television screen, not even shifting when the cold seeped deep into your bones. Everything about this moment defied the laws of the natural world, and yet it had occurred. A niggling worry grew larger as you gripped his hand. Would he disappear? Would Jason one day be here, the next gone? 

How did cheating death work, exactly?

You held him, that night, wrapped in thin blankets, his blurry eyes never leaving the screen. When he finally let out an anguished sob, fingers tight and white, you squeezed tighter, the dam holding your own tears in breaking.  Together, you mourned: for the folly of youth, of freedom, of a life of a young boy who was robbed far too soon. When the sun broke over the polluted haze of Gotham City, you were both deep in sleep; nothing about it soundless but sleep nonetheless.

No more stalling. You were going to ask Jason to tell you, because if he didn’t you couldn’t understand or help him. Seeing him so...fragmented, broke something in you.

He didn’t deserve to suffer in silence.


End file.
